71

Friction and Pressure Drag

You may have seen high winds knocking down trees, power lines, and even trailers, and have felt the strong push the wind exerts on your body. You experience the same feeling when you extend your arm out of the window of a moving car. The force a flowing fluid exerts on a body in the flow direction is Wind tunnel called drag (Fig. 71) 60 mph A stationary fluid exerts only normal pressure forces on the surface of a body immersed in it. A moving fluid, however, also exerts tangential shear forces on the surface because of the no-slip condition caused by viscous effects. Both of these forces, in general, have components in the direction F of flow, and thus the drag force is due to the combined effects of pressure and FIGURE 71 wall shear forces in the flow direction. The components of the pressure Schematic for measuring the drag force acting on a car in a wind tunnel. and wall shear forces in the normal direction to flow tend to move the body in that direction, and their sum is called lift. In general, both the skin friction (wall shear) and pressure contribute to the drag and the lift. In the special case of a thin flat plate aligned parallel to the flow direction, the drag force depends on the wall shear only and is
D

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369 CHAPTER 7

independent of pressure. When the flat plate is placed normal to the flow direction, however, the drag force depends on the pressure only and is independent of the wall shear since the shear stress in this case acts in the direction normal to flow (Fig. 72). For slender bodies such as wings, the shear force acts nearly parallel to the flow direction. The drag force for such slender bodies is mostly due to shear forces (the skin friction). The drag force FDdepends on the density of the fluid, the upstream velocity , and the size, shape, and orientation of the body, among other things. The drag characteristics of a body is represented by the dimensionless drag coefficient CDdefined as
Drag coefficient: CD FD 1 2A 2
(7-1)

High pressure + + + + + + + +

Low pressure

Wall shear

where A is the frontal area (the area projected on a plane normal to the direction of flow) for blunt bodiesbodies that tends to block the flow. The frontal area of a cylinder of diameter D and length L, for example, is A LD. For parallel flow over flat plates or thin airfoils, A is the surface area. The drag coefficient is primarily a function of the shape of the body, but it may also depend on the Reynolds number and the surface roughness. The drag force is the net force exerted by a fluid on a body in the direction of flow due to the combined effects of wall shear and pressure forces. The part of drag that is due directly to wall shear stress w is called the skin friction drag (or just friction drag) since it is caused by frictional effects, and the part that is due directly to pressure P is called the pressure drag (also called the form drag because of its strong dependence on the form or shape of the body). When the friction and pressure drag coefficients are available, the total drag coefficient is determined by simply adding them,
CDCD, friction CD, pressure
(7-2)

FIGURE 72 Drag force acting on a flat plate normal to flow depends on the pressure only and is independent of the wall shear, which acts normal to flow.

CD, pressure = 0 CD = CD, friction = Cf FD, pressure = 0 FD = FD, friction = Ff = CfA 2 2

The friction drag is the component of the wall shear force in the direction of flow, and thus it depends on the orientation of the body as well as the magnitude of the wall shear stress w. The friction drag is zero for a surface normal to flow, and maximum for a surface parallel to flow since the friction drag in this case equals the total shear force on the surface. Therefore, for parallel flow over a flat plate, the drag coefficient is equal to the friction drag coefficient, or simply the friction coefficient (Fig. 73). That is,
Flat plate: CDCD, friction Cf
(7-3)

FIGURE 73 For parallel flow over a flat plate, the pressure drag is zero, and thus the drag coefficient is equal to the friction coefficient and the drag force is equal to the friction force.

FD = 0 if = 0

Once the average friction coefficient Cfis available, the drag (or friction) force over the surface can be determined from Eq. 7-1. In this case A is the surface area of the plate exposed to fluid flow. When both sides of a thin plate are subjected to flow, A becomes the total area of the top and bottom surfaces. Note that the friction coefficient, in general, will vary with location along the surface. Friction drag is a strong function of viscosity, and an idealized fluid with zero viscosity would produce zero friction drag since the wall shear stress would be zero (Fig. 74). The pressure drag would also be zero in this case during steady flow regardless of the shape of the body since there will be no pressure losses. For flow in the horizontal direction, for example, the pressure along a horizontal line will be constant (just like stationary fluids) since the

FIGURE 74 For the flow of an idealized fluid with zero viscosity past a body, both the friction drag and pressure drag are zero regardless of the shape of the body.

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upstream velocity is constant, and thus there will be no net pressure force acting on the body in the horizontal direction. Therefore, the total drag is zero for the case of ideal inviscid fluid flow. At low Reynolds numbers, most drag is due to friction drag. This is especially the case for highly streamlined bodies such as airfoils. The friction drag is also proportional to the surface area. Therefore, bodies with a larger surface area will experience a larger friction drag. Large commercial airplanes, for example, reduce their total surface area and thus drag by retracting their wing extensions when they reach the cruising altitudes to save fuel. The friction drag coefficient is independent of surface roughness in laminar flow, but is a strong function of surface roughness in turbulent flow due to surface roughness elements protruding further into the highly viscous laminar sublayer. The pressure drag is proportional to the difference between the pressures acting on the front and back of the immersed body, and the frontal area. Therefore, the pressure drag is usually dominant for blunt bodies, negligible for streamlined bodies such as airfoils, and zero for thin flat plates parallel to the flow. When a fluid is forced to flow over a curved surface at sufficiently high velocities, it will detach itself from the surface of the body. The low-pressure region behind the body where recirculating and back flows occur is called the separation region. The larger the separation area is, the larger the pressure drag will be. The effects of flow separation are felt far downstream in the form of reduced velocity (relative to the upstream velocity). The region of flow trailing the body where the effect of the body on velocity is felt is called the wake (Fig. 75). The separated region comes to an end when the two flow streams reattach, but the wake keeps growing behind the body until the fluid Separation in the wake region regains its velocity. The viscous effects are the most sigpoint Reattachment nificant in the boundary layer, the separated region, and the wake. The flow point outside these regions can be considered to be inviscid.

Heat Transfer
Separation region Wake region (within dashed line)

The phenomena that affect drag force also affect heat transfer, and this effect appears in the Nusselt number. By nondimensionalizing the boundary layer equations, it was shown in Chapter 6 that the local and average Nusselt numbers have the functional form
Nuxf1(x*, Rex, Pr) and Nu f2(ReL, Pr)
(7-4a, b)

FIGURE 75 Separation and reattachment during flow over a cylinder, and the wake region.

The experimental data for heat transfer is often represented conveniently with reasonable accuracy by a simple power-law relation of the form
Nu C ReLmPr
n

(7-5)

where m and n are constant exponents, and the value of the constant C depends on geometry and flow. The fluid temperature in the thermal boundary layer varies from Tsat the surface to about T at the outer edge of the boundary. The fluid properties also vary with temperature, and thus with position across the boundary layer. In order to account for the variation of the properties with temperature, the fluid properties are usually evaluated at the so-called film temperature, defined as

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Ts Tf 2

(7-6)

which is the arithmetic average of the surface and the free-stream temperatures. The fluid properties are then assumed to remain constant at those values during the entire flow. An alternative way of accounting for the variation of properties with temperature is to evaluate all properties at the free stream temperature and to multiply the Nusselt number relation in Eq. 7-5 by (Pr /Prs)r or ( / s)r. The local drag and convection coefficients vary along the surface as a result of the changes in the velocity boundary layers in the flow direction. We are usually interested in the drag force and the heat transfer rate for the entire surface, which can be determined using the average friction and convection coefficient. Therefore, we present correlations for both local (identified with the subscript x) and average friction and convection coefficients. When relations for local friction and convection coefficients are available, the average friction and convection coefficients for the entire surface can be determined by integration from
L

CD1

CD, x dx

(7-7)

and

L
L

h L
0

hxdx

(7-8)

When the average drag and convection coefficients are available, the drag force can be determined from Eq. 7-1 and the rate of heat transfer to or from an isothermal surface can be determined from

where Asis the surface area.